This morning, for family reasons we ranged afar from our normal parish, worshipping at an Anglo-Catholic ACNA parish. (Yes, they exist outside of Texas). The parish doesn’t have (and, in my lifetime, rarely has had) a choir. The music was provided by the organist and congregational singing. Of the four hymns from Hymnal 1940, two were translations byJohn Mason Neale. This made me wonder how many Easter hymns are by Neale. When I got out of church, my library of American and English hymnals was miles away. So I started with Hymnal 1940, of which five of the 17 Easter hymns were Neale trans ..read more

Last week, the exemplar of the modern English choral sound — Kings College Cambridge — reprised their 106th annual Christmas Eve service of Nine Lessons and Carols. The recording of the live BBC broadcast is available until January 23 and the bulletin is available at KCC’s Lessons & Carols website. The service, created in 1918 and broadcast (almost) continuously since 1928, was central to defining and promoting the distinctive “English” choral sound after World War II. Both the service and the sound were created by the legendary Arthur Henry Mann (1850-1929), the former Norwich chori ..read more

While its September announcement promised to have a hymnal ready by 2029, the new Hymnal Commission this week announced it will have "music resources" in 2029 and a hymnal after that. HYMNAL COMMISSION CREATES MUSIC RESOURCE TASK FORCE Nov 20, 2023 The twelve-member Hymnal Commission, which was chartered at the June 2023 Meeting of the College of Bishops, met at St. Mark’s Church in Arlington, Texas, from November 13-15. Our task was to develop a process that would produce a Hymnal for the Anglican Church in North America. We considered the rich musical gifts of our Church, as well as the ..read more

The Episcopal Church hymnals of 1940 and 1982 have been the main hymnals for most U.S. Anglican churches outside TEC. Longtime readers know that I've long been interested in what sort of hymnal these latter Anglicans will come up with. Now there are two (and someday perhaps three): The Book of Common Praise 2017 was the first such hymnal, from the Reformed Episcopal Church (with its unique history and structure within the ACNA). The publisher released a version with a different title (Magnify the Lord) but later withdrew it to make room  This spring, I learned of a second hymnal, S ..read more

In the past, I’ve expressed my skepticism about Christian Contemporary Music. But as I keep running into (intelligent and capable) CCM advocates, it’s clear I need to identify more theoretical and empirical evidence supporting these concerns.  This month, Terry Mattingly of GetReligion highlighted a study of CCM texts by Prof. Michael J. Rhodes, a Baptist Old Testament professor in New Zealand. (Strangely, the original story and Twitter tweets are from last September). The story was about how Rhodes looked at the lyrics of the first 25 songs in the CCLI Top 100 worship songs. He contras ..read more

Thanksgiving Day is an unusual holiday in the BCP — not part of the liturgical calendar, but with more theological significance than the other “National Days” (as my favorite hymnal terms them). I previously wrote a 1500-word article for North American Anglican entitled “Hymns ‘of’ Thanksgiving and ‘for’ Thanksgiving.” Since people can read it there, let me summarize a few ideas here. First, despite the origins of the holiday with the 17th century Pilgrims, the US ECUSA prayer book ignored the holiday until it got its own collect and readings in the 1928 BCP — and was also mentioned in the 197 ..read more

Among the most theological of C.S. Lewis' books is The Great Divorce. Lewis uses the writer George MacDonald — who he considered “his master” — to explain how so many people end up in Hell. The Great Divorce was the subject of one of four talks by Peter Kreeft last week at the Anglican Way Institute. Kreeft, a prolific author and Catholic philosophy professor at Boston College, noted that one passage of the book is more quoted than any other: There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be ..read more

As (almost) every year since 1918, the King‘s College Choir (@ChoirOfKingsCam) today sang its Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. As with last year, it was led by Daniel Hyde, the seventh KCC Director of Music since the broadcasts began in 1928. Thanks to the current pandemic, it was broadcast via tape delay rather than live with a congregation. Hyde stepped in last fall to lead the choir in the 2019 service. In 2020, with a full year to prepare (albeit during the season of Covidtide), Hyde clearly put his mark on the choir and the beloved Christmas Eve service. He added two carols ..read more

Readers I know I am thankful for any chance to sing a familiar hymn. However, for Thanksgiving hymns, there are really two types: those for the fall Thanksgiving holiday, and those for giving thanks without regard to the season. The former are more uniquely suited for this week in November, and also less well known. From a range of American hymnals of the past 120 years — plus The English Hymnal (1906) from the CoE — I identified eight hymns listed as a “Thanksgiving” hymn. I discussed these eight hymns in a column yesterday in the North American Anglican. Below is the ..read more

Today’s email blast includes an invitation from the ACNA for discounted registration to Keith and Kirsten Getty’s annual conference on contemporary worship music. I was surprised to learn that the Gettys (denominational affiliation unknown) have become the official CCM (and perhaps hymn) suppliers to the ACNA. I mean no respect to the Gettys’ obvious songwriting, performing and business abilities. The planned tribute to Anglican theologian and BCP/ESV editor James Innell Packer (1926-2020) is also well-deserved. However, I’m not just used to a performer being endorsed by a denomination unles ..read more